To understand how high-stakes accountability has influenced teaching and learning, this book looks at the consequences that high-stakes tests hold for students, teachers, administrators, and the public, and demonstates the negative effects of such testing on nontested subjects, minority students, and students with special needs.

The present context of testing and the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind make the proposed book timely and important. Current testing programs provide valuable information to teachers, parents, and policy-makers about students, schools, and school systems. But paradoxically, these programs have unintended yet predictable negative consequences for many students, teachers, and schools. It is essential that the public and policy-makers understand the scope and impacts that result from the inherent paradoxical nature of high-stakes testing.

Schools under Surveillance gathers together some of the very best researchers studying surveillance and discipline in contemporary public schools. Surveillance is not simply about monitoring or tracking individuals and their dataùit is about the structuring of power relations through human, technical, or hybrid control mechanisms. Essays cover a broad range of topics including police and military recruiters on campus, testing and accountability regimes such as No Child Left Behind, and efforts by students and teachers to circumvent the most egregious forms of surveillance in public education. Each contributor is committed to the continued critique of the disparity and inequality in the use of surveillance to target and sort students along lines of race, class, and gender.

For more than a decade, the debate over high-stakes testing has dominated the field of education. This passionate and provocative book provides a fresh perspective on the issue and powerful ammunition for opponents of high-stakes tests.Drawing on their extensive research, Nichols and Berliner document and categorize the ways that high-stakes testing threatens the purposes and ideals of the American education system. Their analysis is grounded in the application of Campbells Law, which posits that the greater the social consequences associated with a quantitative indicator (such as test scores), the more likely it is that the indicator itself will become corruptedand the more likely it is that the use of the indicator will corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor.Nichols and Berliner illustrate both aspects of this corruption, showing how the pressures of high-stakes testing erode the validity of test scores and distort the integrity of the education system. Their analysis provides a coherent and comprehensive intellectual framework for the wide-ranging arguments against high-stakes testing, while putting a compelling human face on the data marshalled in support of those arguments.

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of the high-stakes standardized test movement in Texas secondary schools. The method to accomplish this task was to compare the perceptions between Texas secondary school administrators and supporters, critics, and researchers of high-stakes testing. Out of 400 potential respondents randomly selected from 2005-2006 membership list of Texas Association of Secondary School Principals, 178 administrators participated in an electronic survey to rate the extent to which 31 statements derived from supporters, critics, and the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing as reported by researchers in current literature. Means, standard deviations, and frequencies were used to make assumptions about perceptions of secondary administrators. Independent t-tests were conducted to test for possible perception differences between groups identified in the study. Independent groups examined in this study included: Gender (Male and Female), Years of Administrative Experience (1-4 years vs. 15 or More Years), Campus Classification (Large vs. Small), and Current Campus Rating (Exemplary and Recognized vs. Academically Acceptable). Using an alpha level of .05 to establish significance, t-tests suggest that significant differences exist between large and small school administrators on statements 5 and 7. Further, significant differences exist between male and female administrators on statements 4 and 5. The findings of this study seem to suggest that Texas secondary principals strongly support the following statements: 1. No high-stakes decision such as grade retention or graduation should be based on the results of a single test. 2. Educators are making use of student performance data generated by highstakes tests to help them refine programs, channel funding, and identify roots of success. 3. High-stakes tests have helped focus public attention on schools with lowachieving students. 4. The public display of high-stakes test scores motivates administrators. 5. High-stakes testing has resulted in a loss of local control of curricula. 6. The implementation of high-stakes testing has been a catalyst for increased attention to students with special needs. 7. Doing poorly on high-stakes tests does not lead to increased student effort to learn.